Exploring and Promoting Prosocial Vaccination: A Cross-Cultural Experiment on Vaccination of Health Care Personnel

Abstract

Influenza vaccination for health care personnel (HCP) is recommended particularly because it indirectly protects patients from contracting the disease. Vaccinating can therefore be interpreted as a prosocial act. However, HCP vaccination rates are often far too low to prevent nosocomial infections. Effective interventions are needed to increase HCP’s influenza vaccine uptake. Here we devise a novel tool to experimentally test interventions that aim at increasing prosocially motivated vaccine uptake under controlled conditions. We conducted a large-scale and cross-cultural experiment with participants from countries with either a collectivistic (South Korea) or an individualistic (USA) cultural background. Results showed that prosocially motivated vaccination was more likely in South Korea compared to the US, mediated by a greater perception of vaccination as a social act. However, changing the default of vaccination, such that participants had to opt out rather than to opt in, increased vaccine uptake in the US and therefore compensated for the lower level of prosocial vaccination. In sum, the present study provides both a novel method to investigate HCP influenza vaccination behavior and interventions to increase their vaccine uptake.